Multi-user applications such as chat rooms (voice/text), virtual worlds, and adventure games such as Multi-User Dungeon (MUDs) generally employ proprietary client-server technologies. To turn Web sites into communities that are accessible and offer immersive experiences for the end-user, designers have developed customized browsers, servers, and tightly integrated development, debugging, and monitoring tools. In particular, each system has its own architectural design and intimate GUI. There is currently no standard system that can be employed to provide general purpose services and tools without tightly integrating with a particular browser/server implementation.
Several companies provide proprietary services today on the Internet. These prior art systems are monolithic, with a fixed concept of available services. Consequently, changing these services (i.e., tools and GUI) typically requires that the server source code be modified and, at a minimum, that the server environment be stopped and then restarted. Such prior art systems include, for example, the Run-Time Infrastructure (RTI) for the High-Level Architecture (HLA) for Defense Simulations, as published by the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO). The result is one large and complex API which is very focused, i.e., all or nothing.